The Language of Division

How “Othering” Destroys Us — and How to Speak Differently

In my last essays, I’ve been thinking about why history keeps repeating itself — how old fears resurface in new forms, how quickly we forget, and how stories, books, and myth help keep us human.

They remind us to build compassion, to hold complexity, to resist the urge to close off our hearts when the world feels overwhelming.

But there is another side to language that we don’t always want to look at.

Language doesn’t just build bridges.
It can also build walls.

The words we choose can become weapons. They can divide and dehumanize, often so subtly that we don’t notice it happening until the damage is already done.

Why do humans “other” people in the first place?

It’s old wiring.

When we’re afraid there’s not enough — not enough food, not enough work, not enough safety, love, or belonging — we start scanning for who is not us.

We draw lines.
We decide who belongs inside the circle and who doesn’t.

Belonging helps groups survive. But there’s a shadow to it.

Once someone is placed outside the circle, it becomes easier to justify treating them as less.

Less deserving of protection.
Less worthy of dignity.
Less human.

This is where language becomes dangerous.

Words shape how we see the world long before violence appears.
Long before policies harden into law.

Language defines what feels reasonable, what sounds justified, what eventually becomes normal.

George Orwell understood this deeply. In 1984, the most chilling force isn’t surveillance or punishment, but language itself.

Words are removed.
Meanings are narrowed.
Thought becomes harder because the language to think with has disappeared.

If you can’t say “freedom,” how do you fight for it?
If you can’t name injustice, how do you even recognize it?

Noam Chomsky approached this from another angle.

He spent decades studying how governments and corporations shape the news and the language surrounding it. He called this manufacturing consent.

You don’t have to force people to agree.

You simply frame stories a certain way, repeat them often enough, and eventually people accept things they might otherwise question.

That’s how we end up hearing “collateral damage” instead of civilians.
“Liberation” instead of invasion.
“Efficiency” instead of policies that quietly harm the most vulnerable.

It’s subtle.
It’s often invisible.
And that’s exactly why it works.

When people try to push back on these narratives — when they try to tell fuller or more uncomfortable truths — they often become targets themselves.

Journalists are threatened, jailed, or killed for exposing corruption or war crimes. Even in places that pride themselves on free speech, reporters are smeared or discredited for challenging power.

And librarians — imagine that — are threatened or fired for making sure books that tell different kinds of human stories remain on the shelves.

When every inconvenient fact is dismissed as “fake news,” when lies and spin swirl constantly, it becomes harder for the public to know what to trust.

That confusion isn’t accidental.

It serves those who profit from chaos, distraction, and division.

This is why I keep thinking about Fahrenheit 451.

It’s often described as a novel about censorship — about firemen who burn books instead of putting out fires.

But it’s really about a society so saturated with shallow entertainment and constant noise that people stop asking questions and stop caring about truth.

By the time the fire trucks arrive, most people are grateful for the matches.

When I taught Fahrenheit 451, students were shocked by the upside-down premise — that of burning homes that had books in them.

Mechanical dogs.
Earbuds.
Talking walls.

All now close to reality.

And yet Bradbury wrote the book in the 1950s. He was trying to warn us.

Now that we’re here, can we see what’s happening?
Have we been desensitized by the noise?

I think about this a lot when I watch current debates around banning books.

We are banning books like To Kill a Mockingbird because they tell a story about racism from a white girl’s perspective.

I’ve been told it’s not valid anymore because the writer was white. That from a “woke” perspective, it’s too harsh for young readers. That because it uses language that people once used to denigrate Black people, kids shouldn’t be exposed to it at all.

But when my students — mainly white French farm kids — read about this community and its baked-in racism, told through the eyes of two white children, they understood.

They understood because good teachers always teach context.

They understood a rural Southern white world because it resembled their own.

At the same time, people on the far right want to ban Mockingbird and other books for their own reasons — to sanitize what happened, to rewrite history.

Where is respect for critical thinking?
Where is the truth?

We see the same warning in Lord of the Flies.

Jack builds power by feeding fear, inventing enemies, promising protection.

Ralph tries to lead with care — shelters, signals, shared responsibility.

It’s compassion versus control.
And fear is always the easier sell.

It makes me think about the leaders we choose to follow.

Are they stoking our fears, giving us enemies to blame?
Or are they asking us to care more broadly — to protect one another even when it costs us?

History doesn’t repeat itself on its own.

We let it.

We’ve seen this pattern before.

In Nazi Germany, propaganda didn’t start with camps. It started with language. Jews were called vermin, rats, disease.

In Rwanda, Tutsis were called cockroaches.

Once someone is no longer spoken of as human, violence becomes easier to justify.

It’s tempting to believe this belongs safely in the past.

But it doesn’t.

We still hear words like “illegals” instead of families seeking asylum.
“Floods” of migrants — as if human beings were natural disasters.
Labels like “terrorist” stretched until they mean little more than someone we’re afraid of.

Words like vermin, animals, infestation reappear in political discourse again and again.

If you’ve read history, the pattern is unmistakable.

So what do we do?

We start smaller than we think matters — with the words we choose.

Precision is not weakness.
Humanity is not naïveté.

Saying people without papers instead of illegals, or people living with addiction instead of junkies, is not about political correctness.

It’s about keeping your heart soft and your thinking intact.

Orwell warned us that language shapes what we’re able to think.
Chomsky showed us how power shapes language to protect itself.
Bradbury imagined a society that stopped caring about truth — except for one curious girl who kept asking questions.

So I want to say this especially to young people — and really to anyone who feels overwhelmed.

You don’t have to lead a revolution.

Sometimes the bravest thing is simply to keep asking questions.
To keep noticing.
To keep choosing humane, precise words when cruelty and simplification are easier.

That’s how worlds are rebuilt.

Quietly.
Carefully.

So pause for a moment.

Think about the language you grew up hearing.
The jokes.
The categories.
The offhand labels.

Where might you speak differently now?

What words could you change that would keep humanity in — rather than push it out?

Because that’s how it starts.

With words that become stories.
And stories become the world we live in.

Let’s build one that keeps humanity in.